


you can set yourself on fire but you're never gonna learn

by livtontea



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drugs, Fucked Up, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mature/Dark Themes, No Incest, Not Beta Read, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Unreliable Narrator, allusions to dubious consent, he ODs but it's kind of offscreen, kind of, klaus on the streets and me digging into that a little bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:34:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22873315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livtontea/pseuds/livtontea
Summary: It’s lovely. How washed out and faded Klaus is. Absolutelyenchanting, he says in a bad French accent to the frowning ghost trailing behind him. The feathers on his bright pink boa tickle his skin.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 22
Kudos: 68





	you can set yourself on fire but you're never gonna learn

**Author's Note:**

> so i havent written actual tua content in a while and i thought hey why not vent on klaus? cool
> 
> this is about some of his time on the streets and during this fic klaus; takes drugs, smokes, and is implied to have had not fully consensual sex; overdoses; and doesn't quite try to kill himself but certainly contemplates it, among other things. so basically read with caution. nothing super graphic happens but there are definitely mature themes so i slapped the M rating on here just in case (also it's implied ben killed himself so yeah for real if you might be triggered by this stop right here)
> 
> title is from crazy=genius by p!atd
> 
> enjoy!

He sinks deeper and deeper into the haze of drugs and weed and alcohol, and he fucking loves every moment. Somewhere along the path paved with ghosts and nightmares and constant terror Klaus Hargreeves decides to reinvent himself and doesn’t think twice about in which direction he’s heading. He plummets, first, and then once he stops choking on smoke and throwing up the bitter taste stuck in his throat—Klaus sinks.

It’s wonderful-wonderful, all washed out greys and yellows and blues like the edges of bruises oh his wrists from guys who don’t care about being rough; all purples and sickly greens like the bags under his eyes he sloppily masks with too much mascara. Wonderful-wonderful, like a cheery munchkin singing about a path to the city, singing about how it’s one foot in front of the other and then you’re there—unless you misstep, of course.

Klaus rolls a blunt and sinks a little deeper with each hit. He steals a pack of cigarettes and holds the acrid smoke in his lungs until he has to gasp for breath. He rubs his arm until it’s raw and readies a needle.

It’s lovely. How washed out and faded Klaus is. Absolutely _enchanting,_ he says in a bad French accent to the frowning ghost trailing behind him. The feathers on his bright pink boa tickle his skin.

It’s not _freedom,_ not really. He’s tied down by all the shit he takes, all the nights spent in a muddled tangle of limbs and lips and other things. All the nights his skin seems translucent in the flashing lights and slicked with sweat that isn’t his own.

“Oh what the hell,” he says, for the nth time, and shakes another handful of pills out into his hand.

“Don’t,” says Ben. “Klaus, you already took too many, you know this could—”

“Oh, shut _up._ ” Klaus flaps his hand at Ben and doesn’t meet his eyes as he pops the pills into his mouth and swallows.

He grins at the prospect of (more) drugs clouding his system, and doesn’t listen to Ben calling his name. It’s all a messy stumbling blur, and he couldn’t give a shit, doesn’t give a shit, about the consequences. Viva la revolucion, motherfucker.

The consequences, as usual, are severe enough to end up in the hospital and have to ditch an angry Diego and later have to put up with Ben’s bitching, but not so severe that he isn’t able to brush them right off and go find his next fix.

Lovely.

That’s a nice word. Lovely, loverly, love-ah-ly. Lovely like blood dripping from his nose and dirtying his pants, lovely like dark lines crisscrossing his chest, lovely like hands and teeth and everything in between. Mind-numbingly lovely lovely lovely; tidal wave drowning him from the inside, drums inside his head, screaming and wailing and cold hands clawing at his throat.

Fucking fantastic. He’s on a constant high and he hates himself for it, hates the constant stream of mud trailing through his head and blending everything together, hates it but not as much as the phantoms burned into his retinas. Hates it all—throws everything to the wind, says _fuck it, fuck it all_ and downs another shot, takes another dose. He hates it. He loves it. Loves the giggling breathless laughter always at the back of his throat, loves the way pain is like through a curtain, loves it all; and when he’s on the ground, bruised and out of it and slurring his speech, “loathe” and “love” don’t sound all that dissimilar.

Everything is great! His eyes burn and his lungs choke up, and he rides his high with skill.

Hates it, loves it, whatever, none of it matters. He doesn’t give a shit, and with luck, he never will.

“Stop it,” says Ben, and Klaus ignores him and takes a step forward and feels the icy wind blow through his hair. “Klaus, stop.”

“Hah,” he gasps, raw and burned and fucking insane. “No, Benny—I don’t think I will.”

“Step. Back. Klaus, I swear, don’t take another step forward or else—”

“Or else _what,_ Ben? What are you gonna do? Go on, tell me, _tell me_! How would you stop me?”

Ben’s fists are clenched and trembling at his sides and his eyebrows are scrunched together and his bottom lip is wobbling like is used to when they were little kids that had things to lose. Are his eyes moist? “ _Fuck you,_ if you—”

“Chill out,” snaps Klaus. He steps back from the ledge. “There, are you—are you fucking happy?”

“Why do you keep _doing_ this—”

“—I mean, this is what you wanted, right—”

“—if you keep pulling shit like this—”

“—not like it would matter either way, I mean—”

“— _if you die like I did, I won’t forgive you. Never. I won’t fucking forgive you if you do what I did.”_

Klaus shuts his shit-spewing mouth and feels the loathing course through the air. Who loathes who is another thing nobody gives a shit about, because they both know the loathing comes from everywhere.

“Ben?”

“Shut up. Just _shut up_.” Ben deflates. “Let’s—let’s go somewhere, it’s cold.”

“You can’t get cold,” Klaus mumbles, and walks away from the chasm where the bridge makes way to roaring water.

So everything is fine. Klaus lives from high to high, from fix to fix, from stranger to stranger—and he likes it. From the way he acts, it’s obvious. He drinks and he smokes and he swallows, and he sinks deeper and deeper and he doesn’t give a flying fuck about what will happen when he can’t sink any further.

**Author's Note:**

> im on tumblr [here](https://seven-misfits.tumblr.com/) and if you liked this a comment would be greatly appreciated! have a great day folks


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